


Nothing New Beneath the Sun

by mangochi



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Body Worship, Dreams, M/M, Post-Battle, Sharing a Bed, trying to talk about feelings without ever talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:23:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangochi/pseuds/mangochi
Summary: T’Challa finds him after the battle. The fires for the dead are still burning in the night, pillars of smoke and ash rising into the dark sky. The scent of incense is strong in the air, the sound of distant drums echoing across the plains.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Monna Innominata by Christina Rossetti

T’Challa finds him after the battle. The fires for the dead are still burning in the night, pillars of smoke and ash rising into the dark sky. The scent of incense is strong in the air, the sound of distant drums echoing across the plains.

M’Baku sits watching over it all, perched on a rock atop a hill. His warriors huddle around their own camp, far enough to give him privacy, close enough to give him peace of mind. He does not like the lowlands, with their warm nights and flat plains. He can see for miles from where he sits, and if he can see, then he can also be seen.

“You should not be here,” he says, when he hears the soft footsteps behind him. They stop, and he knows he only hears them at all because T’Challa wishes him to. He does not turn around, keeping his eyes fixed on the pinpricks of flame in the distance. “A king should properly mourn his own.”

“Tomorrow, I can be the king,” T’Challa says, “and you are my people too.” His voice is thin, faded with exhaustion, and M’Baku finally turns to look at him.

At first, he cannot pick him out from the shadows, only barely aware of a dark shape lingering there, blacker than the night. Then the clouds shift, or perhaps T’Challa sheds some of his darkness, and M’Baku can make out a glint of vibranium, the line of his silhouette.

“Take that ridiculous thing off,” he says. “I have no wish to speak with a mask.”

There is a brief pause, and then T’Challa steps into the moonlight, his suit melting away from his face. There are no bruises darkening his face, but he looks battered nevertheless, his movements stiff as he moves to sit beside M’Baku.

For a moment, M’Baku considers asking, but he did not come down from the mountains out of interest in an outsider king, and the fact that T’Challa is here at all is answer enough to any question he particularly cares to ask. The silence stretches on, and he yawns pointedly, scratching at the back of his neck.

Finally, T’Challa speaks, his voice low and careful. “You would be welcome in the palace, you know. You and those who came with you. We have healers, for your wounded, and-"

M’Baku bristles a little. “We have our own healers, Black Panther. Have you forgotten so soon?”

T’Challa holds a hand up, clearly seeking peace, and M’Baku visualizes himself slapping it out of the air in a number of ways before settling with a disgruntled noise, hunching over to rest his elbows on his knees.

“I only meant,” T’Challa begins, then pauses a second. “I would be honored,” he continues, “if you would stay. The Jabari fought with great honor today.” He turns to look at M’Baku then, and although M’Baku refuses to look back, he sees enough to sense the hesitation in the way T’Challa holds himself. _Fool_ , he wants to say, irked without knowing exactly why. A proper king would simply command it, and it would be so. This gentleness will not satisfy a country.

He chews on a dozen responses he could give, any number of them cutting and dismissive enough that even T’Challa will melt back into the shadows, and they will go their separate ways in the night. Beside him, T’Challa waits silently, and though he sits easily within reach, he feels a thousand miles away. Something in M’Baku’s chest burns at the thought, as hot as anger, but something entirely other.

“One night,” he says, and he holds up a finger for emphasis. “We will stay.”

……………..

The room is larger than his own chambers back in J’Abariland, the bed low and wide and covered in sleek black sheets that linger on the verge of ridiculous. The decor is luxurious, _modern_ , and the walls gleam with a sheen that boasts of the vibranium running through every inch of the palace.

“It is adequate,” M’Baku announces. He leans his spear against the wall and plants his hands on his hips, making a show of taking in the space. The floor is neither wood nor stone, and he decides he does not like it. He would have been happily quartered in the barracks with the rest of his warriors, but T’Challa looked at him and _insisted_ , and he told himself he was too tired to protest.

“There is a bath through that door there,” T’Challa says, stepping up from behind him. He has shed his suit for a simple set of robes, somber black fabric fitted to his shoulders and waist and loose about his legs. There is a clean scent clinging to him, like mint, but warmer. “If you should need anything, an attendant will come.”

“Right now, all I need is sleep.” M’Baku is already stripping off his arm guards, tossing them to the unsettling floor. They clank oddly against it, looking crude and unformed in this glittering place, and he wonders if that is how he looks as well, a piece from another puzzle.

“Let me,” he suddenly hears, and it is all the warning he receives before he feels light fingers at his sides, fiddling with the ties to his breastplate. His first instinct is to shrug T’Challa away. His second is overwhelmingly brazen, and for a moment, he lets it wash over him, wild and reckless and surging. Then it passes, and he breathes again.

“I think your Dora Milaje will have something to say about this.” M’Baku does not move to interfere, nor to assist, his arms held slightly away from his sides. He feels T’Challa step closer, the occasional press of his knuckles against M’Baku’s sides as he moves his way down the row of ties.

“They are not here to see,” T’Challa says, his voice quiet and distant with concentration.

“They are right outside this door,” M’Baku points out. “This door is too big, by the way. What is the point of it?”

“I didn't think _you_ would be afraid of them.”

“I am not afraid of anything,” M’Baku snaps, aggrieved. “But I am not a fool, either.”

T’Challa chuckles, but he does not argue the point. He moves to the other side now, the breastplate loosening over M’Baku’s shoulders. “My father,” he continues, as if nothing was said, “had a set of traditional armor like this. When I was young, he allowed me to wear it.”

M’Baku cannot help but snort at the image of the young prince in too large armor, playing at war. He lifts his hands to finish the rest of the ties, knocking T’Challa’s aside. They are warm, more so than he expects. “Away with you now,” he says. “Don't you have anyone else to bother?”

“You are not hurt,” T’Challa says, ignoring him entirely. He says it as a statement, but his brows pinch in question. He searches M’Baku’s face intently, as if mere words are not enough to assuage.

“Of course not.” M’Baku drops his breastplate and turns to face him properly, thrusting out his chest. “ _Clearly_ , I am as well as ever. You overestimate your own armies, little king.” He means to insult, to provoke, and he is left in even more consternation than before when T’Challa merely smiles at him, small and private.

“That is good,” T’Challa says. He opens his mouth, but then there is a light metallic ping and he pauses, glancing down at his bracelet.

One of the beads glows lightly, and an impatient voice rings out, “Are you still at it, brother? Tuck him in and get down here, I have something for-”

T’Challa brushes a thumb over the bead, silencing it, and he shakes his head. “Shuri calls. I should go.”

“If you tuck me in, I will have to kill you,” M’Baku says.

T’Challa’s eyebrows lift in amusement, and looks for a moment as if he might say something else, but then he stops himself and takes a quick step backwards instead. “Sleep well, M’Baku.”

He is gone in the next blink, the door closing silently behind him. The room feels larger now, in his absence, and M’Baku breathes a little easier for it. He frees himself from the rest of his armor and lays it out by his weapons. After a moment’s thought, he takes his knife and puts it under the pillow. He may be a guest here, but he is still a guest in the house of a man he tried his very best to kill just days ago, and a well-loved man is dangerous whether he intends it or not.

He washes the grime of battle from his skin and stretches himself out on the low, soft bed, ignoring the folded sleep robe at the foot of it. The sheets are soft and cool against his bare skin, and he watches warily as the low light emanating from the ceiling fades of its own accord.

Sleep does not always come easily for him, but it takes him swiftly this night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wasn't going to post this til later today but then i stayed up til 2am and drank half a bottle of wine so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

He dreams of the river.

It wears the form of a heavy, rippling snake, water flowing within its clear scales of ice and stone, and in its jaws it carries T’Challa, arcing up into the sky.

In the dream, M’Baku stands on the shore and throws him a spear, piercing the clouds of vapor hissing off the serpent’s scales. _Kill it_ , he shouts, but T’Challa only looks down at him, his eyes soft and kind, and he lets the spear fall from his hands. It is caught in the coils of the river snake and shatters into glittering shards.

They stand together on the falls now, water swirling around their ankles. The cliffs are empty of witnesses, red and desolate as the wind howls over them. T’Challa’s hair is dusted with snow that does not belong in the lowlands, and when M’Baku opens his mouth to speak, his breath billows out in a white cloud.

A quiet sound, like the wind across the plains. He frowns and leans closer, his neck prickling. Another sound, whispering across his skin, and he suddenly knows, with absolute certainty, that he is being watched.

A thousand eyes watching from the empty cliffs, and T’Challa’s the darkest of them all-

“M’Baku.”

M’Baku is awake as suddenly as if he was doused in water, his body tensing before he wills himself to relax, to feign sleep as his hand steals beneath the pillow. He finds the hilt of the knife there, and he spins up and around, intending on piercing through the throat of the shadowy figure leaning over him. His blade does not sink into soft, yielding flesh, no strangled shout of pain follows. He finds himself caught instead in an iron grip, familiar eyes blinking apologetically above him.

“If I let go, will you stab me?” T’Challa asks evenly, his voice pitched low.

M’Baku makes a harsh, disbelieving sound, and he wrenches his arm away, tossing the knife over the side of the bed. His heart is still racing, adrenaline slowly being replaced by outrage. “Hanuman save me from this foolishness,” he says, his throat dry and rough. “I could have killed you.”

“I am almost offended that you think it would've been so easy.” T’Challa sits down on the edge of his bed, as if he did not just sneak his way into M’Baku’s bedchamber in the dead of night, and M’Baku contemplates the possibility of all this being a very strange, stupid dream.

“If you are not a dream, then go away,” he says.

“I am not a dream.”

“Damn.” M’Baku does not know if he is relieved or not. He sits up, the sheets pooling around his waist, and yawns pointedly. “Well. Go away anyway, I suppose.”

T’Challa shifts his weight and folds his hands in his lap. The moonlight slices across him, illuminates one side of his face. The other is in shadow, and M’Baku cannot make out his full expression. “I could not sleep.”

M’Baku barks out a short laugh, incredulous. “This is what you woke me for? Come back in the morning, if you must.” He rubs a hand over his face, already awake but feeling as if he is now caught in the dream of someone else.

T’Challa is quiet, but his hands tighten subtly over each other, and M’Baku spares him another glance. T’Challa, he realizes, is in a robe like the one M’Baku has kicked off his bed by now, the thin white linen clinging to his back and shoulders. He imagines him, the king, tossing and turning before slipping from his bed and prowling through the dark halls to stand over M’Baku as he sleeps, and he scratches at his beard idly, simultaneously trying and not trying to too closely examine his own reaction to the thought.

“Trouble sleeping, eh? If you are so lonely, I know a remedy for it,” M’Baku says, and he wags his eyebrows meaningfully when T’Challa glances back at him.

“Don’t be crude,” T’Challa says. “I can leave if-”

“Ach, don’t be so dour.” M’Baku makes a halfhearted swipe at T’Challa’s sleeve when he begins to stand, and T’Challa settles back down with a new stiffness to his spine that makes M’Baku grin. “There, now out with it. You might as well entertain me, now that you’re here.”

T’Challa looks down at his hands, his fingers twining and untwining. M’Baku resists the urge to reach around and hold them still with his own hand. “Do you think I am a good king?” he finally asks.

M’Baku rolls his eyes to the heaven and clicks his tongue. “I do not stroke egos for free, Your Majesty.”

“I am not asking for my own _vanity_ , I only-” T’Challa bites off the end of his heated sentence, swallows it down while it still struggles for escape. When he speaks again, his tone is low and dry. M’Baku almost prefers the one before. “It is not usually an indication of a good ruler when there is civil unrest within the first days of their reign.”

“If it helps,” M’Baku interjects, “it was hardly civil.”

“Be serious.”

“I am always serious.”

T’Challa looks doubtful, but he finally relaxes, his hands flexing over his knees.

“If you had won the challenge,” T’Challa begins, and M’Baku looks at him warily, for this is something he tells himself often not to think of, has been telling himself since the moment he stumbled away from the falls, soaked and bruised, “all this might have been avoided.”

M’Baku’s lip curls. “Is that what you tell yourself, when you cannot sleep at night?” His chest is suddenly hot, with that same not-anger that seem to possess him whenever T’Challa speaks to him. He leans forward, pokes a finger into T’Challa’s chest. He does not hold back, and T’Challa flinches a little, surprise etched across his face. M’Baku jabs him again in the same place. He has a right to take offense, he thinks. He has journeyed far today, he has battled, he has lost good warriors, good friends, and now, he is losing even his sleep, and over what?

“Is that why you are here tonight, my king?” His voice is rising and he cannot bring himself to lower it. “So lost in the past you had to stumble here and beg my reassurance? The only assurance I can give is that you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“I am not here to _beg_.” T’Challa’s eyes are hard, chips of flint in the moonlight. He sounds more like a king now, M’Baku thinks, oddly satisfied by it. “I thought you, you of all people, that you would understand-”

“You’re dancing about it like a kitten with its ball. Whatever it is you want something from me, just-” M’Baku is abruptly cut off by a strike to his jaw, knocking his head to the side. He is more shocked than hurt, and he moves on instinct, shoving T’Challa back against the bed with an arm across his throat. T’Challa, unexpectedly, allows it, only giving a soft grunt as M’Baku pins him there with his weight.

For a moment, they lie there, T’Challa’s breath heavy and ragged on M’Baku’s face. His pulse flutters against M’Baku’s arm, like the wings of a captured bird.

“T’Challa,” M’Baku says, low and calm now. “What is it that you want?” All his aggression has drained from him, as suddenly as it came, leaving him with only a distant curiosity and something else, an ember of determined heat sitting deep within him. T’Challa’s eyes flutter shut at the sound of his name, and his lips part on a shaky exhale. M’Baku watches them, licks his own without thinking, and the flicker of heat grows brighter. T’Challa presses up slightly against his arm, enough to show defiance, and M’Baku wonders if _that_ is what he wants, after all.

“I-” The word seems ripped out of T’Challa, his voice rough. He swallows, and it makes a quiet sound that seems unbearably loud in the small space between them. “I should not have hit you. I’m sorry.”

“If it is punishment you seek, I cannot give it,” M’Baku says. He waits for a response that does not come. T’Challa seems caught in some deep internal strife, his hands clenched in tight fists against M’Baku’s chest. M’Baku’s heart pounds beneath them. Another long moment passes, and M’Baku finally relents, easing his weight off of T’Challa’s chest. T’Challa finally makes a noise at that, unexpectedly distressed, and his hands jerk higher, trying to catch onto fabric that is not there.

“Ah, all right, all right.” M’Baku stays where he is and reaches out, sliding his fingers around the back of T’Challa’s neck. “All right, then. Come on.”

T’Challa takes a long, shuddering breath, his voice catching with a wet hitch, and M’Baku shakes him gently until T’Challa looks up at him. His eyes are bright and stricken, his jaw trembling with the effort of holding himself together. It is nearly painful to look at, too raw and unshaped. His chin tilts up, and for a second, M’Baku feels himself being drawn in, expecting-

Their foreheads bump together instead, a little harder than he thinks is intended, and T’Challa exhales with a sigh that ghosts across M’Baku’s face. It is too dark to see him properly, and M’Baku stares blindly down into the shadows. For some time, they lie together, M’Baku unconsciously matching the rhythm of T’Challa’s breaths. In and out, like the tide. M’Baku has seen the ocean once, when he was young. He has never forgotten the sound of the waves, and he hears them again now.

“I didn't want to kill him.” The words come slowly, so quietly that M’Baku has to strain to hear. “I cannot stop thinking...I cannot help but think that I have failed by doing so.”

“Regret is not a luxury that men like us can afford,” M’Baku says, not unkindly. They are his father’s words, echoing back through him years later. He thumbs at T’Challa’s cheek impulsively and it comes back damp, still warm from T’Challa’s skin. He curls his fingers into his palm and decides to say nothing of it. “The outsider walked his path. Now you must walk yours.”

“He was not an outsider.” T’Challa’s voice is stronger now, more determined.

M’Baku lifts a shoulder in half a shrug. “If you say he is not, then he is not. If you say you have failed, then you have. It is that simple. There is no point in dwelling on what could have been.” He flicks T’Challa’s forehead and rolls away, his front suddenly cold without the warm press of T’Challa’s body against him. He feels like he has been handed something, soft and fragile and quivering in his palms, and he holds it tentatively, unsure whether to return it or hold it closer.

“I am going to sleep now,” he announces, after a moment and he turns away onto his side, his back to T’Challa. He is tired, and his chest aches, and the bed is too damn soft. “You can do whatever you want.”

There is no answer, and for a long, doubtful moment, M’Baku thinks that T’Challa has slipped away again, gone as silently as he came. It would be for the best, he decides. The night has been odd enough.

Then he feels a hand, tentative and light on the back of his shoulder. M’Baku fights back the instinct to tense in response, and by the time he breathes through it, he feels T’Challa’s warmth against his back, the curl of T’Challa’s fingers over his shoulder blade. _What are you doing?_ The words well up in his throat and freeze on his tongue.

He did not mean this, when he made his offer. But now, as he lies there feeling T’Challa’s heart pound too quickly against him, he can hardly remember what he did mean.

This is not so bad _,_ he thinks a moment later. T’Challa does not say a word, though he cannot be asleep yet, and if they lie there and speak nothing of it, perhaps it will be just that. Then T’Challa shifts closer, his nose and lips brushing over the back of M’Baku’s neck, and something in him strains tight, threatening to give. He was wrong; this is a disaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (next chapter is kind of all.........porn)


	3. Chapter 3

M’Baku wakes briefly at the first touch of sunlight. He squints, for a moment, at the lightening sky through the floor to ceiling window stretching along the length of the room, and wonders if he imagined a solid wall there the night before.

T’Challa makes a soft, snuffling sound behind him, and M’Baku nearly elbows him in the gut in reflex. He catches himself just in time and lies still, taking stock of the situation.

T’Challa’s arm is heavy and warm around his waist, his knee lodged between M’Baku’s thighs, and when he shifts in his sleep, pressing closer-

M’Baku closes his eyes. If he does, he can pretend that he cannot feel T’Challa’s hard cock rubbing against his ass, and that his own does not twitch in response.

“This is a bad idea,” he says aloud.

“Only if you say it is,” T’Challa mumbles in response, his voice heavy with sleep. His arm tightens around M’Baku, and his lips press against M’Baku’s shoulder in a way that can only be intentional. “Go back to sleep.”

“You-”

“M’Baku,” T’Challa sighs, in a way that makes M’Baku freeze, the rest of his protests dying away. T’Challa says his name like a lover, and he feels his chest crack like a river stone, broken apart by the winter ice. “M’Baku, do you think I crawl into the beds of all my guests?”

“Perhaps just the charming ones,” M’Baku tries. He is not nearly awake enough yet to have this conversation.

“Well. I would not be here then, in that case.” T’Challa kisses him again at the top of his spine and M’Baku holds carefully still, afraid to breathe and shatter the moment. “Sleep. There is time still.”

Time? There is never enough time. M’Baku opens his mouth to say so, but T’Challa makes drowsy shushing sound and nuzzles against him, cat-like, and M’Baku swallows. There is a heavy lump there, lodged in his throat, and it is shaped like T’Challa’s name. T’Challa’s hand moves on his side, rubbing in small, soothing circles, and it is all too easy to close his eyes and let the rhythm of T’Challa’s breaths carry him away.

……………..

When he wakes again, it is with a sudden start, his skin hot and his heart racing, and he pulls at the sheets wildly. T’Challa looks up at him, eyes glazed and heated, and he swallows down M’Baku’s cock again without hesitation, his throat working tightly around him.

“You-” M’Baku groans, incredulous, trying to summon the will to move. This is a dream, he thinks. A foolish, impossible dream that he will look back on fondly, but never act upon, because he is not _stupid_. T’Challa, however, dreamed up or not, seems to think himself beyond such silly things like responsibilities and what is stupid or not. He sucks at M’Baku with a determination that more than makes up for his evident inexperience, and he gives a low hum of approval when M’Baku’s hand finds its way, unbidden, to the back of his head.

 _The king_ , M’Baku thinks suddenly, _has his mouth on my cock._ He digs the palm of his free hand into his eyes and takes a deep breath, choking back another groan. He is already desperately hard, aching in a way that has him suspecting T’Challa has been at this for a long, long time.

“I'm beginning to think you like rude awakenings,” he says. He is proud of how steady his voice remains.

T’Challa pulls off with a lewd, wet sound, and M’Baku peers down in time to see him lick his lips, his tongue startlingly pink. “Should I stop?” he asks, his voice devastatingly hoarse. He will, M’Baku realizes. If M’Baku refuses now, T’Challa will pull away and smile and pull the veil shut behind his eyes, and they will see each other off at the city gates and never speak of this again.

“No, damn you,” M’Baku croaks, when his struggle with himself reaches its inevitable end. He is the one who is damned, but fuck if he’ll let T’Challa know it. T’Challa, who watches him with the glittering eyes of a stalking hunter, his cheek leaning against M’Baku’s thigh. “Don't you fucking stop now.”

“Then it is not a rude awakening,” T’Challa says, and M’Baku snorts despite himself. The T’Challa lying between his legs now seems a different creature altogether than the wan shadow that crept into his bed just hours ago, but his warmth is the same, and when T’Challa turns to press a lingering kiss to the crease of his thigh, that feels the same as well.

Minutes later, M’Baku is beginning to think he has agreed to his own slow, agonizing death. His cock twitches, neglected, as T’Challa attempts to kiss and suck at every inch of M’Baku that is not where it is needed most. His mouth is hot on M’Baku’s inner thigh, the softness of his lips a distracting contrast to the rasp of his beard over sensitive skin, and M’Baku curses, squirming against the bed. His hands have not been pinned down, but is a matter of pride now, and he kicks at the bed in frustration.

“Get on with it,” he pants, and T’Challa only glances up at him before working his way down further, his tongue dragging over each kiss he leaves behind.

M’Baku clamps his thighs together impatiently, trapping T’Challa’s head in place, then yelps as T’Challa abruptly sinks his teeth into the meat of his thigh, hard enough to bruise. “Fuck!” T’Challa’s cheek rubs against his cock as his legs jerk open again, the head catching at the corner of his lips, and M’Baku comes with a shuddering groan, falling helplessly apart. He _aches_ with it, his cock, his chest, T’Challa’s tongue soft and cruel as he teases M’Baku through the aftershocks.

T’Challa is wearing a panther’s grin when M’Baku’s vision finally clears, and he makes a point to kiss the bite he left behind, mouthing gently over the rest of his marks. They are stinging and hot, damp with sweat and saliva, and M’Baku thinks with sudden dread of the long hike back up to his mountains. There is come on T’Challa’s cheek, and on his lips, and M’Baku watches, still panting, as T’Challa wipes his fingers over the mess and carefully licks them clean.

“You will be the end of me,” M’Baku tells him. His voice only wavers a little. “Come up here.”

T’Challa’s tongue swipes at the corner of his mouth, and he nuzzles distractedly at M’Baku’s hip. “Why?”

“Why- to bite off your nose, what do you think? Let me kiss you.”

“All in good time, my friend.”

“Since when were we friends?” M’Baku asks the ceiling, a little petulant.

“Stop talking,” T’Challa chides gently. He squeezes M’Baku’s thighs with his hands, making a quiet, pleased sound in the back of his throat, and M’Baku cannot hold back a shiver at the pure enjoyment on T’Challa’s face, the exposed appreciation he sees there as T’Challa’s hands drift further up, stroking over his hips and spreading over his stomach. His fingertips smear over the remaining streaks of come there, rubbing it into M’Baku’s skin. He will have to bathe again before he departs, and he wonders if he can manage to coax T’Challa in with him.

“Do you always sleep undressed?” T’Challa murmurs, his hands framing M’Baku’s ribcage. M’Baku points at his closed mouth, raising his eyebrows exaggeratedly, and T’Challa pinches his side.

“Kiss me and find out,” M’Baku says, grinning triumphantly. T’Challa is exasperated, but he leans up and obliges, his teeth catching at M’Baku’s lip. M’Baku reaches up and takes T’Challa’s face between his hands, tipping their foreheads together in a mirror of the previous night. He wonders if T’Challa remembers the feeling of his weight, wonders if he will hold that memory close and look at it like M’Baku knows he will hold this one. A burden is lessened when carried by two, after all.

“Yes,” he says, when they break for breath, T’Challa’s hands idly tracing old scars on his chest and sides. “I always sleep like this.”

“Somehow I'm not surprised,” T’Challa mutters. M’Baku kisses him again. He is getting a taste for it, he finds. He takes T’Challa’s wrists in his hands and tightens his knees around T’Challa’s hips, flipping them over with a twist of his middle. T’Challa watches him curiously, his robes open at his chest, riding up above his knees.

“Take this ridiculous thing off,” says M’Baku. The words feel familiar, and T’Challa’s mouth curves up as he pulls the robes obligingly over his head. The sheets pool loosely around them, and they are exposed and bare in the sunlight. T’Challa wears nothing now but his necklace, and M’Baku hooks a finger in the chain, giving it a questioning tug.

A moment of hesitation, T’Challa’s eyes lifting to meet his. His chin dips in the slightest of nods, his lips part, still swollen from the stretch of M’Baku’s cock, and M’Baku lifts the necklace up and off, leans over to set it carefully on the unused pillow.

“There you are,” he says, sitting back on T’Challa’s thighs. T’Challa blinks at him, his brow furrowing. “Don't be shy.”

“I am not,” T’Challa says, affronted.

“It's cute, really, that you think that.” He sets his hands on T’Challa’s chest, kneading absently, and chuckles when T’Challa twitches at a casual brush over his nipples. “Talk to me.”

“Mm.” T’Challa looks at him, his eyes already beginning to glaze. His cock is hard and dripping against his belly, just from having his mouth on M’Baku, and M’Baku makes a low, guttural sound of satisfaction at the thought. “What?”

M’Baku leans over him, presses his open mouth to T’Challa’s cheekbone, and feels the heat beneath his skin. “Tell me how you like it,” he says, and he reaches down to wrap his fingers around T’Challa’s cock.

“Ah,” T’Challa breathes, his hands jumping up to M’Baku’s thighs. “Thought you would want to.”

“You don’t say enough.” M’Baku counters. He tightens his grip, then loosens it deliberately, watching T’Challa’s face. “Go on.”

“M’Baku…”

“Come on, just a little.” M’Baku grins, loose and lazy, and he thumbs at the head of T’Challa’s cock, watching a muscle in his jaw jump as he tries not to react. “Do you like that?” He does it again, and this time, T’Challa gives a quiet moan. “Do you like my hand on you?”

“Yes,” T’Challa gasps, then looks startled, as if he did not mean to say it aloud.

M’Baku makes an encouraging sound, running the backs of his fingers over T’Challa’s stomach.

“Tighter,” says T’Challa, and M’Baku obeys, fascinated by the struggle he sees behind T’Challa’s eyes, the need to cling to control and the urge to give in to himself. “Faster. M’Baku, please-”

M’Baku bends and catches T’Challa’s groan with his mouth, his thighs clamped tight around T’Challa’s hips to keep him from bucking as M’Baku brings him off in rough, dry strokes. T’Challa seems to prefer it like this, with an edge of discomfort that marks the reality of it, and it is not long before he spills over M’Baku’s fingers, his choked cry muffled between them. His fingers dig painfully into M’Baku’s thighs, breath shuddering, and M’Baku kisses him hard, hard enough to stifle the pounding of his own heart.

He does not have T’Challa’s grace afterwards, reaching out to wipe his hand on T’Challa’s discarded robe and kissing away the feeble noises of protest T’Challa makes. “Will you see me off?” he asks. “When we depart today.” He stretches out alongside T’Challa, leaving one leg thrown over him, and watches as T’Challa slowly drifts back to earth, blinking dazedly up at the ceiling.

“Of course.”

“Don’t,” M’Baku tells him. “It will become an ordeal. We will go as we came.”

T’Challa frowns. “The recognition is well-deserved. Without the Jabari, the outcome would’ve-”

“No need to rush things.” M’Baku’s hand finds its way idly down to his thigh, and he presses his thumb imperceptibly to the bite T’Challa left there, testing the depth of the bruise. “You will have plenty of time to sing my praises when we are gone.”

“Unlikely.”

“If that mouth of yours is as good as speeches as it is at sucking cock, I expect it to be a good one-”

T’Challa smacks him on the ribs for that, but he’s fighting back a laugh, the shadows finally dispersed.

……………..

It is only a week later that he receives the summons from the Tribal Council. An invitation, written on finely pressed paper in the king’s own careful hand, and M’Baku smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Send requests and yell with me on tumblr @mangopuffs  
> Follow my struggles at twitter @_beautifulsoup

**Author's Note:**

> Twitter: @_mangochi


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